Padres: Australia's WWI military chaplains

On the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, we focus on the men and women known affectionately as ‘padres’, chaplains who have served the Australian Army officially since 1913. At the heart of the program is the untold story of one of Australia’s earliest WWI padres, an Anglican minister who by war's end was Major The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen. A Senior Chaplain, he served in Egypt and on the Western Front in France for almost four years. Drawing on original unpublished letters, sermons and newspaper accounts of the time, we chart his harrowing story from parish life in Sydney to the bloody battlefields of the Somme.

We’ll also hear from Padre Pitt-Owen’s grandson David Pitt-Owen, historian Dr Michael Gladwin, and the current Principal Chaplain Anglican to the Australian Army, Geoff Webb, who tells producer Geoff Wood how chaplaincy has evolved to meet contemporary military and peace-keeping missions.

Transcript

PADRES: AUSTRALIA'S WWI MILITARY CHAPLAINS

Transcript for Encounter

Kerry Stewart: Hello, I’m Kerry Stewart and welcome to the program. On the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, Encounter is going to focus on the men and women affectionately known as ‘padres’, chaplains who’ve served in the Australian Army since 1913.

At the heart of this program is the untold story of one of Australia’s earliest military chaplains, Anglican minister The Reverend Pitt-Owen, who served in Egypt and France for almost four years. Drawing on original unpublished letters, sermons and newspaper accounts, we chart his remarkable story from parish life in Sydney to the battlefields of the Western Front.

This program, called ‘Padres’, is produced by Geoff Wood.

(Music)

Geoff Wood: In 1915, The Reverend Reginald Herbert Pitt-Owen, an Anglican minister from Sydney, was sent to war: the Great War, the war to end all wars, the First World War, as we know it now.

More than 400 Australian military chaplains served in the conflict. The Reverend Pitt-Owen was one of the earliest to join and one of the last to leave. Posted first to Egypt and then to the Western Front in France, he would spend almost four years in conditions of unimaginable horror.

(Reading) Another chaplain and I went out one morning after one of those nights when our boys had been over to take the German trenches and with a burial party from one of our camps we made graves for 143 brave boys who’d gone down in the fight. 52 only of whom we were able to identify…

The lead was flying all around us…My chaplain friend ought candidly speaking to have ceased to exist…but was most wonderfully preserved. A 5-9 shell fell right under his feet throwing him aside as it embedded itself in the ground, bursting in the air and leaving a crater in which two draught horses could have stood comfortably protected. Except for a severe shaking he was unhurt and would not leave his work…

I have fallen down flat on a number of occasions not expecting to get up again but managing to scrape through, God only knows how. One day the lads would have carried me off on a stretcher to the Dressing Station but I was quite satisfied to hold on as long as it was possible to stand on my feet. And it means such a lot to the men if their padre sticks it.

(Music)

Geoff Wood: Australia’s army chaplains, known to all as ‘padres’, were ordained clergy, commissioned with the rank of Captain. Their role then, as now, was to provide religious, ethical, cultural and pastoral care to soldiers and their families, to offer advice to their superior officers and to lead religious and other services within army units.

But in the First World War chaplains did much more: counselling soldiers, writing letters for them, organising entertainments, working with the wounded and dying in hospitals, aid stations and in the front lines, often acting as stretcher bearers—and like the Anglican chaplain, Pitt-Owen, sometimes becoming casualties themselves.

We know some of what he experienced from his letters, sermons and newspaper accounts of the time, which have been kept by his family. And with their permission, we’ll hear extracts from those largely unpublished writings as we chart his harrowing journey from parish life in Sydney to the bloody battlefields of the Somme.

At the time, the Royal Australian Army Chaplains Department was in its infancy, having been formed in 1913. Like so many others, they weren’t prepared for modern industrial warfare. But they rose to the challenge.

On this centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, we’ll hear about the men and women who have served the Australian Army as chaplains in times of war and in times of peace, a role whose origins can be traced to a fourth-century Roman Catholic saint. Telling the story is Dr Michael Gladwin:

Michael Gladwin: With Martin of Tours, this is where the origins of chaplaincy, and particularly British and European chaplaincy, are. He had a profound conversion after apparently meeting a beggar on the road for whom he cut his cloak and then had a vision the next day that this beggar was actually Christ that he’d seen. He’d given that cloak to Christ.

And from that story we get the word for chaplains. The cloak was called the capella, and the small part that was cut off was called the capella, so ‘the little cloak’ is the literal translation of that. And from capella we get the word ‘chaplain’. Because that piece of the cloak was kept as a relic and eventually, through the medieval period, kings started to take that relic into battle with them in the hope that it would bring some sort of divine favour.

And so they then appointed clergy to look after and protect this relic. And so those clergy who were appointed to look after that relic on the battlefield were called ‘chaplains’, ‘guardians of the little cloak’ in literal translation.

And from that experience of appointing chaplains, they remained as part of the ecclesiastical and military machinery of European fighting forces. And we have records of chaplains in the English Civil War, on both the parliamentary and on the commonwealth side. And a more formalised structure of chaplains developed during that civil war, where the appointment of chaplains-general and a command and administrative structure developed. And that’s where the modern British chaplaincy department began, and that’s really the roots of the Australian chaplains department.

(Music)

Initially there were four denominations appointed and the structure was built on four leaders called ‘chaplains general’. They were the head chaplains, nominated by their denomination. And they were the largest denominations: the Anglican, the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist. Eventually you had… because there were several different Protestant groups, you had the creation of effectively a Protestant department. It was rationalised over time. And so we ended up with four different chaplains general.

There was one Hebrew chaplain appointed, called Hebrew or Jewish chaplain. Obviously there were very small numbers of Jews in terms of the population of the AIF. And I should say that the numbers and the proportion of chaplains were based on the 1911 census, which had a very detailed breakdown of the religious complexion of Australia and of the different states. And so there’s a rough correlation in terms of the proportion of chaplains to that 1911 census. So you had more Anglican chaplains than Roman Catholic chaplains, more Roman Catholics than Presbyterians, and roughly equal numbers for the Methodists. But a very small number of Jewish chaplains—so there was only one Jewish chaplain, given a roving commission across all Jews in the AIF. So you can imagine how difficult his task must have been, trying to reach people right across that vast infantry force.

(Music)

Geoff Wood: Dr Michael Gladwin is lecturer in history in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University. He’s just published a history of Australian Army chaplains titled, Captains of the Soul.

One of the earliest Australian chaplains of the First World War was The Reverend Reginald Pitt-Owen. An Anglican minister, he was Acting Rector of Liverpool in Sydney in August 1914, at the outbreak of war, when he was appointed transport chaplain to the 2nd Reinforcements, who sailed for Egypt in February 1915. His grandson, David Pitt-Owen, still lives in Sydney.

David Pitt-Owen: At the age of 30, my grandfather entered the Anglican priesthood. From the start of his ministry he showed leadership ability. During his ministry he was instrumental in building three parish churches and organising them into effective congregations. In 1914, grandfather went to St Luke’s Liverpool as the Acting Rector.

He was also to be the Acting Anglican chaplain to the army camps at Liverpool and Holdsworthy. It was a temporary position, important for grandfather, though, because in this short period war broke out and Australian troops were being mobilised as reinforcements for war in Europe.

(Music)

He must have been asked or sought permission to go with the men as a transport chaplain. He was appointed duty Chaplain Fourth Class and had the rank of Captain for the voyage only. He sailed for Egypt in February 1915, returning in April and taking up the position of Assistant Priest at St John’s Parramatta. He was only there a couple of weeks when the Archbishop of Sydney called him to prepare to return to Egypt as a chaplain to the troops again. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces on 1st July 1915 and was attached to the 7th Infantry Brigade.

(Reading) I am in charge of the Church of England funerals in Alexandria for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and this is perhaps the saddest part of my work. We have missed only one day in the last twelve months without a funeral, and that was about three weeks ago. From Saturday to Saturday, not missing even Sunday, day after day, the burials take place. After the 6th August engagement, one day there were 45 military coffins placed in the local military cemetery—Australians, New Zealanders, Tommies, and quite a few officers.

David Pitt-Owen: He arrived in Ismailia in Egypt in 1916, where he was attached to the 5th Field Artillery Brigade and became the only chaplain and officer at the No. One hospital in Cairo. In March he was disembarked at Marseilles in France and there was attached to the 4th Field Artillery Brigade.

He stayed with the Australian forces for the rest of the war. He was present at the Battle of Pozieres and the Somme.

Michael Gladwin: The chaplains’ tasks in the field were first and foremost to be among the troops and to be where they were needed. And so chaplains positioned themselves usually with medical officers, right up near the forward areas. They were there to provide whatever support they could. So that could be practical sometimes, in making sure there were urns of hot coffee for troops coming back from the front lines; they were there to minister to the wounded and the dying; they were there to provide whatever support they could, moral or spiritual or even welfare; they would take letters from the troops up in the front lines and deliver them back when they went behind the lines.

A key role was ministering the sacraments as well, particularly Holy Communion, and for Catholics, Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics—that’s those in the Anglican Church who were more sacramental in their theology and closer to a Roman Catholic understanding of the sacraments—for them it was crucial to be there to minister the sacraments. And those particularly important sacraments were Holy Communion, for Roman Catholics it was Confession, and it was also Final Unction for those who were near the point of death. It was that absolution that they gave to soldiers in those extreme situations.

So that sacramental and ecclesiastical role was important, but you had chaplains also operating behind the lines. So many were based in hospitals, and you had a structure of hospitals that began with the forward regimental aid posts, troops would be ferried back to field hospitals, from there they would go back to base hospitals, and the more serious cases from base hospitals back to England. So you had chaplains based at all those different points as well as based with the troops. And they were scattered across brigades. You would have four chaplains per brigade—two Anglicans, one Roman Catholic and one Protestant.

Behind the lines, another role that chaplains developed was this role in providing amusement, providing a place for soldiers to recreate and to rest, to have R&R. And Salvation Army chaplains, for example, were quite clever in scrounging resources. One chaplain managed to secure a German hospital that was captured and have that set up as what was called a ‘Diggers Club’, where soldiers could come and they could get coffee and tea, they could read papers, they could play billiards, they could write letters back home—have all sorts of wholesome entertainment and recreation. They could play records, there were amateur photography studios there as well.

Another chaplain managed to salvage a piano from a trench—of all things, a German piano—and have that installed in one of these Diggers’ Huts as well. So music became an important diversion as well.

(Music)

Geoff Wood: Dr Michael Gladwin.

On RN and online, you’re with Encounter and me, Geoff Wood, exploring the role of Australia’s military chaplains, known to officers and soldiers alike as ‘padres’.

The First World War padre Reginald Pitt-Owen arrived in France from Egypt in March 1916 with the rank of Captain, where he was attached to the 4th Field Artillery Brigade in time for the battle of Pozieres, one of the engagements involving Australian troops on the Somme. It was a baptism of fire for all involved, as his grandson David Pitt-Owen explains.

David Pitt-Owen: In early 1916 he disembarked at Marseilles and I understand was present at the battle of Pozieres, where he was injured. He was in the area that was called ‘no man’s land’, which was between the two opposing forces. And he would ride on his bike with water and food strapped to himself. And often there would be live ammunition flying past him, bombs going off. And it was part of the job, of course, of the chaplain to go out into this particular battlefield and look after the injured and dying, to bury the dead, to give people the Last Rites and help, with the orderlies, to bring the injured back to the dressing stations, which he did on a regular basis.

My grandfather saw himself as a servant-priest and that it was his duty as a priest, in the office of a priest, to bring the sacraments where possible to the men in the field—the men who were dying, the men who had died. It was important to him that the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, be offered on a regular basis. And it was this sense of sacramental duty that was really the driving force that kept him buoyed and working with the men at the front.

In many ways, grandfather saw himself as a man’s man. He liked to be in the thick of it, to be with ‘the men’, as he described them. And he felt that the presence of his office as a priest was very important to the men at the front. And this drove him—and kept on driving him—right to the end of the war.

(Reading) 4 November 1916: After I wrote to you, I’m sure I dodged my number, because I had numberless narrow escapes…but got through with just some severe shocks. I was very sorry to have to leave my unit, and the men did not like my coming away but I think it was best, and indeed I had no choice. I am feeling pretty right now although one easily gets out of sorts after getting nervy. I shall always feel that I am an illustration of the truth of those beautiful words of our Master, ‘Lo, I am with you always even unto the end.’

I should like to relate to you some of our experiences on the Somme but I’ve not the inclination…I wish I could blot it all out of my mind.

David Pitt-Owen: I think there had been a considerable change in his attitude from the days when he went across as a transport chaplain with the first ship, where he was preparing concerts and giving church services, to the actual real life of being in the front and seeing the terrible atrocities that happened. I think it shocked him to go out and bury the dead one night and then have to go back out the next night and rebury the dead that had been brought back up to the surface as a result of the bombs that had exploded.

He couldn’t but help be moved and I think deeply shocked by the appalling conditions that everybody, including himself, were working under on a constant basis. There were often days and weeks where he perhaps got no more than about two hours’ sleep out of 24 hours. And it naturally took a toll on everybody, including himself.

(Music)

(Reading) Herewith is a list of cemeteries that have been established in an area about three miles square. But it does not include other burial places - of which there are many further behind the lines. This number for such a small portion of the front gives you an idea what the lines are like when you remember that they have a continuous length, on the West only, of considerably over 400 miles.

The Chaplains always aim at getting the bodies to a cemetery although of course thousands have been put in graves just where they died owing to the impossibility - for various reasons - of doing anything else in their cases; and then there are those—not a few either—who were never buried,…… ‘nuff sed’...

A few days ago a shell fell in one of these cemeteries and the body was so unearthed that the legs were thrown up over the white wooden cross, and of course it was a very weird sight to look at.

Michael Gladwin: The chaplains intellectually drew on deep wells of Christian thinking, right back to the early church fathers, to Augustine of Hippo, who’d written at great length about just war and about the Christians’ relationship to war and to the military. And also Thomas Aquinas in the medieval period, Hugo Grotius some centuries later. So there’s a long and rich intellectual tradition that they drew from, and also to help soldiers make sense of these questions of evil and suffering.

And so the… what’s called the ‘Free Will defence’, the fact that God is not the author of evil, but he has permitted a degree of freewill to human beings and because human beings are free and they’re leaning towards sin, or their disposition is toward sinfulness, that on a giant scale leads to the sorts of war they’re experiencing.

But there was also an emotional problem of evil that they had to grapple with, and this was perhaps more difficult in a period where no one knew about post-traumatic stress. No one knew until the Vietnam War about the debilitating psychological effects of modern industrial warfare. They were seeing that firsthand.

Some chaplains themselves were casualties of that. There was one chaplain, a Padre Plane, who after seeing immense bloodshed and having to bury hundreds of bodies on Lone Pine said that he couldn’t sleep. He had insomnia and he said he had bodies on the brain. This was trauma that led to a nervous breakdown. And obviously many soldiers experienced those same symptoms of shellshock, of shattered nerves from the constant threat of artillery bombardment, facing of death on a daily basis. So that was another issue, that emotional problem that chaplains had to deal with.

David Pitt-Owen: It would be hard not to be changed, both in appearance and personality, after three-and-a-half years on the front line. Reports home indicate a man much aged. Being in the thick of it and seeing first hand the carnage, the trauma and suffering of the men must have had a huge impact on his health. Certainly the letters home reflect this.

He enlisted at 11 stone, which is just on 69 kilos, and returned just under 8 stone, around about 50 kilos. He, like many others, was wounded, shell shocked and gassed.

(Reading) The Windsor and Richmond Gazette, 30 November 1917: Captain Chaplain, The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen, formerly rector of this parish, has been promoted to the rank of Major and is now Senior Chaplain with the 3rd Division of the AIF. His health has improved somewhat, but from a snapshot seen, he is a mere shadow of his former self.

David Pitt-Owen: In the day that my grandfather was a priest there was a thorough understanding of what the office of priesthood was. And there was a sense of duty and service. And the office came first, the person came very much second. And he was able to put up with the terrible horrors that he met each day in the knowledge that duty called and that it was his responsibility as a priest that he should carry out those duties.

He went to war as a chaplain at the beginning of the war and was still a chaplain in active service at the end of the war. He had suffered shell shock and he had been gassed. But it was always his concern that he be at the front with the men that he served and looked after. And he didn’t waver from that through the entire experience, as horrible as it was.

(Reading) The Southern Times, Weymouth 1917. It was impossible for anyone to witness the way Australians commemorated on Wednesday April 25, the Anniversary of the landing of their troops at Gallipoli, without being profoundly moved; and this applied in a very particular sense to the deeply impressive memorial services which were held just after midday at Westham. One, the more imposing of the two, was the Church of England service, and the other was for men in the Free Church denomination…A striking and eloquent tribute to fallen Australians fell from the lips of Captain Pitt-Owen.

(Reading) Psalm 115, verse 15. ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints.’

…I’ve see big strong men doing work with tears rolling from their eyes. And today my brothers we are met here in order that we may pay our tribute to the honour and memory of those same brave men.

Let us keep their memory green and let us strive through the inspiration which their lives must always give to bear in our own lives the fruits of noble and honourable deeds. We shall ever remember that they have died for God.

This is the highest thing any man can do, to lay down his life for his Maker…

Geoff Wood: Part of a sermon delivered to 2000 troops and civilians at an Anzac Day memorial service in Weymouth, England in 1917 by the Anglican padre Captain—later Major—The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen, one of Australia’s earliest military chaplains.

You’re with Encounter on RN and online, tracing Australia’s military chaplains from World War I to the present day.

(Music)

War theology would have its greatest impact after the armistice in 1918, with crucial contributions from two World War I military chaplains—the existentialist Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, who served on the front line with the German imperial forces, winning the Iron Cross, and Vatican II convenor, Pope John XXIII, who was a military chaplain and stretcher bearer in the Great War Italian campaigns.

At the time, however, the language of suffering, sacrifice and redemption, drawing on Christian theology, dominated popular discourse of the First World War, as did the notion of a muscular Christianity, embodied most notably by the Salvation Army padre, William McKenzie. One of the first to land at Gallipoli after the initial attacks in 1915, he was known by all as ‘Fighting Mac’.

Michael Gladwin: William McKenzie was perhaps the most famous of the First World War chaplains. He embodies a muscular Christianity. And this was a period in which—from the late 19th century—many churches were scratching their heads about a decrease in the numbers of men in the pews. There was a much greater proportion of women in the churches and there was what was called ‘the man problem’, how to get men back in the pews.

And this was being discussed in the late 19th century and in the years up to the First World War. And it was believed that a muscular kind of Christianity that could reach men—to be a man among men with an emphasis on physical prowess, a robust constitution, as well as a high-minded moral and spiritual tone—that was sought by clergy right across denominations.

And so when you had the mobilisation of the Australian infantry force, there was recognition that the chaplains who could connect with these men would embody that kind of muscular Christianity. That’s not to say that all did. There were clergy of all sorts of temperaments and stripes among the chaplains and interestingly, a muscular Christianity didn’t always necessarily connect with the soldiers. You had men who were noted for their gentleness, for their humility, not necessarily these muscular characteristics. And yet, that idea of the muscular Christian was still important.

And McKenzie embodied that in the sense that he was a big man, he was a boxer, he was known for his wicked right hook and for making an impression on his men for his booming singing voice, his cheerfulness, his coolness under fire, his courage on the battlefields in the face of artillery fire and machine gun fire. Chaplains who were stretcher bearers—and that was another common role that I haven’t mentioned before, and it was probably the most dangerous role a non-combatant could undertake, but chaplains who were stretcher bearers were going right into the front lines as well—they were also respected. And McKenzie was particularly respected, because he took immense risks to go and bury soldiers. On Gallipoli, chaplains would bury soldiers at night because that was the only safe time to go out into no man’s land, and they would bury their soldiers.

And you had a mythology developing around McKenzie. ‘Fighting Mac’ was his nickname, and this is partly from his previous days before the war, where he was known for his physical prowess. And on one occasion a publican who had objected to his street preaching—he was in the Salvation Army in a strong street preaching and revivalist tradition—he apparently picked up this publican and dumped him in a trough, and later became friends with that publican.

He was one of the longest serving chaplains, so there was a continuity and a cumulative relationship that he developed with the soldiers that he stuck with right through Gallipoli and then right through most of the campaigns on the Western Front. He had to leave early, his health was broken. He also was suffering physically from the long effects of war service, just as many of his soldiers were.

And when he came back to Australia he was described as ‘the boys’ best friend’ by Murdoch, who was one of the prominent war correspondents. He was also described as the one person apart from the Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, that all diggers wanted to meet. So immense affection, and we could probably describe it as celebrity status, for a man like McKenzie.

There were few chaplains who had that sort of national platform and were nationally known, but there were scores of chaplains who had a similar reputation as outstanding chaplains and as outstanding men among men.

(Music)

Geoff Wood: Lecturer in history in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University, Dr Michael Gladwin, whose history of Australian Army chaplains is titled Captains of the Soul.

Like William ‘Fighting Mac’ McKenzie, the WWI Australian Anglican chaplain Reginald Pitt-Owen suffered physically and psychologically from the effects of several years’ war service on the Western Front in France.

(Music)

(Reading) England. Medical Report History.

12-05-1918: Reported sick, complaining of pains all over body; sore eyes, headaches and vomiting. Had been gassed a week previously.

David Pitt-Owen: He was sent to England twice for convalescence: the first time to Weymouth in 1916 after he’d been buried alive by a bomb blast and suffered shell shock; the second time to London in 1918 after he’d been gassed and as a result caught pneumonia. Recovering, he asked to return to Sydney as a Transport Chaplain and was en route when the war ended.

While at Weymouth in 1916 he stayed and became friends with a Mr Richardson, an antiquarian. On his large property ‘Monte Video’ huts were erected to be used as makeshift hospitals for the injured Australians. Grandfather, while convalescing, took the role of chaplain.

Richardson had been so impressed with the Australian men and their valiant contribution to the war that he’d decided to bequeath some ancient Bibles and a rare 14th-century manuscript, The Rimini Antiphonal, to the Australian nation. He asked grandfather for his advice on where best these precious objects should be housed. Grandfather suggested the Mitchell Library, which had a rare books facility. Richardson died in 1928 and in due course his bequest arrived in Sydney.

Julia, my daughter, was later to be one of a group of choristers to sing from these manuscripts for the first time in some 600 years. It was a thrill for my wife and myself to be present at that concert, knowing that grandfather had played a vital role in the manuscripts’ gift to the nation.

(Music)

Geoff Wood: David Pitt-Owen, with the amazing story of the 14th-century Italian manuscript of Gregorian chant, The Rimini Antiphonal, and its journey to Australia, along with a collection of rare Bibles, now held in Sydney’s Mitchell Library, a journey suggested initially by his grandfather, a World War I Anglican padre who by war’s end was a senior chaplain, Major The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen.

And if you’d like to hear that story in full, catch The Rhythm Divine this Sunday, 3 August, at 6am or download the audio from the website—just head to the RN home page.

You’re listening to Encounter, with me, Geoff Wood, exploring the role of Australia’s military chaplains, commonly known as padres.

Australia Army chaplains have always been expected to lead religious services and activities within units, and to provide advice and comfort to soldiers and their families on religious, ethical, cultural and welfare matters. Chaplains have also had to resolve any doubts they might have about their role as men and women of peace in an organisation designed for war.

Although they are commissioned officers in the Australian Army and wear uniform, chaplains do not as a rule carry arms. It’s an issue at the forefront of current war theology, as military forces increasingly take on the role of peacekeepers.

Geoff Webb: I think the fundamental problem always comes back to chaplaincy—is it right for us to be part of the military? I think that’s the fundamental question. Should essentially men of peace and women of peace be in an organisation that is designed to fight wars?

Geoff Wood: Geoff Webb is the Principal Chaplain Anglican with the Royal Australian Army Chaplains Department.

Geoff Webb: I deal with it really from a faith perspective, to understand that God has given us this world to look after and at times people have to confront evil if evil is not to triumph. And that means that, within a legal and moral framework, we have a duty to protect those who need protecting. And that’s what we’ve done in East Timor, that’s what we’ve done in Afghanistan and Iraq—to protect those who need protecting.

And I think that’s a duty we all have, but of course the greater duty is to bring an end to wars as soon as… cleanly and completely as we can. And chaplains are there to care for the people who have that awful responsibility, to care for their souls. Because a lot of it is people having to confront pretty awful things and that’s why a lot of them are left shattered by it. You know, we try to bring meaning into what can appear to be a meaningless, awful business.

Michael Gladwin: That question of role tension is an important one, and it certainly is a question that chaplains of all periods have had to grapple with. One of the ways in which the ‘just war’ tradition helped them was to see that the decisions to go to war at the strategic level were political decisions made by Australia’s prime minister and made by generals, and they were culpable for those decisions, they were responsible, morally and ethically, for that decision to go to war.

Chaplains saw the army and the soldiers that they were serving as those who didn’t bear that responsibility. They were part of the chain of command and they were faithfully serving their country and serving their government. And so for most chaplains, that tension was reconciled by seeing that regardless of the political justice or the political decision, soldiers were those in Australia who perhaps more than most Australians needed spiritual and moral help.

And so chaplains saw that need, regardless of the justice of the cause, to be among soldiers and to minister to soldiers. And that certainly holds right through the 20th century. Although, what I did find was during the Vietnam War, and even more recently during the second Gulf War in Iraq, in 2003, to a lesser extent the Afghanistan Wars of recent times, there were more sustained critiques coming from those within the Chaplaincy Department, a more strident questioning of the status quo. They’re still a minority, but there still is that strain of providing a moral compass to Australia’s political and military leaders as well as the soldiers on the ground.

But for most chaplains, the concern was to minister in whatever way they could to those soldiers who were faithfully serving their country by going to war.

Geoff Webb: The way I see it is, as a chaplain you’re never dealing with someone at some sort of human level that doesn’t take into account the spiritual, because from a chaplain’s point of view all of us are spiritual beings and all of that is bound up in what we do, because we look at the whole person. When I look at someone I always look at them as a spiritual, eternal being. And really in any situation—whether it’s dealing with someone with post-combat disorders or whether it’s just dealing with the normal hassles of life—assess where they’re at and gently and clearly lead them and help them as much as you can.

And it’s one of the things, the reason I’ve been an army chaplain, because you get a chance to be with people and to look after people, bringing them closer to what they are as beings created for eternity is how I see it.

Geoff Wood: Principal Chaplain Anglican with the Royal Australian Army Chaplains Department, Geoff Webb, who worked with INTERFET’s peacekeeping mission in East Timor in the 1990s, reflecting the changing nature of the chaplain’s role in the modern army.

Formed officially in 1913, the Chaplains Department in 2012 had 67 Regular Army and 83 Army Reserve chaplains belonging to the major Christian denominations—Catholic, Anglican and Protestant—with a minor representation from the Jewish faith. The first female chaplain was appointed in 1992.

The absence of a truly multi-faith approach, including Muslim representation within the Chaplaincy Department, was highlighted during the Australian Army’s deployment in Afghanistan.

Geoff Webb: I think we need to be able to say to the populations where we are that we are making an attempt to understand you. And, I mean, chaplains have. And chaplains in Afghanistan particularly have really worked very hard at developing relationships with the local religious people. So, I mean, in East Timor we took… we went into a predominantly Catholic country, we had Catholic chaplains. We’ve gone into Afghanistan, certainly Australians, with no Muslim chaplains, but our Christian chaplains really have made pretty great efforts to understand and get to know the local religious leaders. And I think by and large command have appreciated that they’ve got someone at least that the Muslims understand is a religious person.

Michael Gladwin: That role has changed. Particularly the biggest change has been in what’s called the ‘care chain of command’; that is, this ministry to soldiers on the front lines, but also behind the lines in terms of social welfare, in terms of psychology. And from the 1960s, in particular, there was the rise of the social sciences and of the profession of psychology. And so the army began to appoint psychologists. You also had the development of welfare organisations within the defence forces.

And so that took, in many ways, some of the roles and the burdens that chaplains had borne up to that time. Really, the chaplain was the social welfare officer before the 1960s. And that meant a rethinking of the role of chaplains. Although, there’s one important difference between chaplains and every other person who’s in that care chain of command and that is the fact that chaplains are on about developing friendships and an intimate relationship with their troops and working out of that relationship.

And chaplains are the only ones who are actually going into the front lines with soldiers, they’re the only ones who go out on patrol. For example, recently in Oruzgan province in Afghanistan, you had some chaplains still going out on patrol with Australian soldiers outside the patrol bases.

The psychologists, the social welfare workers don’t go out there. There’s a clinical distance: they’re back in the bases, they’re not up in the front lines, and not on call 24 hours a day. They’re not embedded in the unit in the same way that a chaplain is. And so chaplains still have a unique role within that chain of command. But it has meant for chaplains also defining their role outside merely a therapeutic mode of chaplaincy. And so chaplains have recognised that they need to retain that distinctive role, which is offering spiritual and moral guidance.

Another important role has been, particularly since the late 1980s, the army’s increasing contribution to peacekeeping and peace making overseas. And this is where chaplains have played another crucial and new role, particularly because the army is going into countries like Timor-Leste or Afghanistan where the people are deeply religious. And there’s a great need to understand the religious and spiritual mores of those people. And what you found in Timor-Leste and Afghanistan was an immense respect for the man of God from Australia. And this is what the chaplains are often called—in Timor-Leste they were called the ‘Amu’ or the spiritual leader; in Afghanistan called something akin to a mullah, the equivalent of an Islamic spiritual leader.

And often the chaplains were in the vanguard of forming relationships with the local people. Because the local spiritual leader was so significant in those cultures they could build a bridge and a great deal of cultural understanding. So, for example, chaplains had to explain to the command in the peacekeeping operations in Timor-Leste about the different Roman Catholic holy days. Timor-Leste is a deeply Roman Catholic country and so the chaplains were able to explain why certain things couldn’t happen on sacred holidays as well. But they were deeply respected by the local people and played a really important role in acting as a bridge to those communities.

The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen, who is a chaplain to the Australian forces, is expected home shortly. Mr Pitt-Owen was working at St Luke’s Liverpool when war was declared and he has worked amongst the troops ever since the outbreak of war, with the exception of two months, when he was helping the late Rev William Knox in the Parish of St John’s Parramatta…

In 1916, he was in No Man’s Land and many a time with food and water bottles strapped to him he mounted his bicycle and rode out with it to his men. Here, too, he ministered to the dying, carried the wounded, set broken limbs, attended to a hundred and one things for the boys, and under heavy shell fire, dug the graves to bury those who had paid the supreme sacrifice.

He was himself buried to the shoulders at the battle of Pozieres, and was rescued and sent to England, suffering from shell shock. Here he was given work to do at Weymouth and Southall, until he was well enough to return to the front.

In May of this year he was badly gassed and taken away from his parade suffering from pneumonia as well. Mr Pitt-Owen himself says: ‘Thank God I was able to see my men through the push. It lasted 8 weeks and I was going night and day, only getting 2 hours’ sleep out of every 24.’ The reverend gentleman looks much older than when he left Parramatta, but with rest we hope he will soon be himself again.

(Reading) I well remember when I was at the front how much care was taken of the graves of our men by their comrades. Whenever it was possible, and even under shellfire a substantial cross of wood or tablet of stone was erected and a suitable inscription put thereon. And if someone without any sentiment suggested that the effort was a fruitless job the answer would be, ‘Well, it’s a pretty bad state of affairs if I can’t look after my cobber’s grave.’ It was a little thing perhaps but it was a great thing. It was a token of love and respect and regard.

Geoff Wood: One of Australia’s earliest World War I padres, Major The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen, who survived the war as a Senior Chaplain. He was known to his men as ‘The Bishop’.

He returned to Australia, where in 1918 he was appointed Chaplain to the Returned Soldiers. In 1919, he was inducted as rector of St David’s Arncliffe by the Archbishop of Sydney.

My thanks to David Pitt-Owen and his family for allowing me to quote from The Reverend Pitt-Owen’s letters and other writings, both published and unpublished, and for allowing the use of photographs and images from their archive, a selection of which you can find on the Encounter website, along with details of today’s guests and online audio to stream or download.

And we’d like to hear your thoughts or experiences of Australia’s military chaplains. Send an email from our website or tweet us @RNencounter.

My thanks also to Dr Michal Gladwin, author of Captains of the Soul, a history of Australian Army chaplains, and to Principal Chaplain Anglican Geoff Webb and the Royal Australian Army Chaplains Department, who celebrated their centenary in 2013.

For further reading you might also like The Great and Holy War, by Philip Jenkins. [Also Michael McKernan's, Padre: Australian Chaplains in Gallipoli and France].

You’ve been listening to ‘Padres: Australia’s WWI military chaplains’, produced and presented by me, Geoff Wood. Sound production was by Mark Don with readings from Ian Coombe and Lynne Malcolm. Acting executive producer for Encounter is Kerry Stewart.

Guests

Dr Michael Gladwin

Dr Gladwin is Lecturer in History in the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University. His history of Australian Army chaplains is titled, Captains of the Soul (Big Sky Publishing, 2013).

David Pitt-Owen

David is the grandson of the WWI padre, Major The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen

Geoff Webb

Geoff is the Principal Chaplain Anglican with the Royal Australian Army Chaplains Department.

To mark the centenary of World War One, RN hosts a series of special broadcasts. The Great War: Memory, Perceptions and 10 contested questions explores 10 critical questions about the war and Australia’s place in it.

What could bring together a 14th century Italian illuminated manuscript of Gregorian chant known as the Rimini Antiphonal, an English collector of rare bibles, a WWI hospital for Australian veterans of Gallipoli in the south of England, an Australian military chaplain, and the State Library of NSW? The answer is music, and the terrible power of sacrifice.